Sunday, January 16, 2011

Japanese bishop seeks lay help with Neo-Cats

The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan (CBCJ) has
called for the cooperation of priests and laypeople to confront
“problems” with the Neocatechumenal Way, which he says has had a negative effect in the country.

“In those places touched by the Neocatechumenal Way, there has been
rampant confusion, conflict, division, and chaos,” the Jesuit Archbishop
of Osaka, Leo Jun Ikenaga, said in a statement published in Katorikku Shimbun, the Catholic Weekly of Japan, this week, ucanews.com reports.

“In Japan, the net effect has been negative,” said Archbishop Ikenaga
in his statement.

“We bishops, in light of our apostolic pastoral
responsibility, could not ignore the damage.”

Pope Benedict XVI refused a request
from four Japanese bishops, including Archbishop Ikenaga, to suspend
the Neocatechumenal Way for five years that the prelates made in a
meeting in Rome on Dec. 13.

A few weeks before that meeting, the Japanese episcopal conference
announced that it would suspend the activities of the movement in Japan.

Archbishop Ikenaga’s statement suggests that the bishops are unwilling to let the matter rest there.

“Until now, the CBCJ has engaged with both the Holy See and the
Neocatechumenal Way. But now the time has come to gain the participation
of the laypeople of Japan,” he wrote in the statement dated Dec. 20.

Archbishop Ikenaga said that the pope plans to send an envoy to Japan soon.

He said that the bishops hope that those who have come into personal
contact with the actions of the Neocatechumenal Way will relate their
experiences to the pope’s envoy.

“The fact is, it’s very difficult for the real state of affairs to be conveyed to a place as far away as Rome,” he wrote.

“We hope that they [the Neocatechumenal Way] will take a hard look at
why things haven’t worked out here so far and, for the first time, help
us root out the cause of the problems, so that we can find the path to a
solution.”

The meeting in Rome was attended by the pope, the Vatican’s Secretary
of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, five other cardinals and one
archbishop.

The Japanese delegation included Bishops Osamu Mizobe of Takamatsu,
Ryoji Miyahara of Fukuoka, and Isao Kikuchi of Niigata.

The 86 year-old
Bishop Takaaki Hirayama, who is retired in Rome, also attended.

The Neocatechumenal Way set up in Japan around 1970 in the Diocese of
Hiroshima. In 1990, the affiliated Redemptoris Mater seminary was built
in Takamatsu diocese, which has the smallest number of resident
Catholics of any Japanese diocese — only 5,000 are registered